Congratulations to Rafe Brown, Rob Moyle and Town Peterson who just learned that their proposal "RAPID: Re-organization of Philippine Rainforest Biodiversity Following Disturbance on Regional Scales from a Powerful Typhoon” has been recommended for funding by NSF with a likely start date of April 2nd, 2014. This $125,000 grant will allow EEB/BI researchers and students, working in collaboration with the National Museum of the Philippines and six Philippine universities and colleges to re-survey terrestrial biodiversity at eight forested sites in the central Philippine, which were recently devastated by Super typhoon Haiyan, the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded history. Much like the research effort following the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980, this work will set in place a network of collaboration aimed at following the recovery of forest communities after catastrophic disturbance in this biodiversity hotspot island archipelago. The project will train a new cohort of U.S. and Filipino graduate students in methods of field-base biodiversity study and analysis, in hopes of enabling repeated follow-up studies at 5, 10, and 15 years from now